


Nightmares

by Thymesis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dark, M/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Sexual Content, Uncle/Nephew Incest, Unhappy Ending, very dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 15:15:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thymesis/pseuds/Thymesis
Summary: Leia knows exactly what her son and her brother are doing…and she allows it.It keep the nightmares at bay.





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by discussion with amoretpsyche. Probably not quite what you had in mind, but hopefully you won’t totally hate it. ;-)

Ben was plagued by nightmares.

Leia could feel their effects on her son, of course. But mostly, she heard them.

Sometimes, she would be jolted out of bed by his screams, and she’d be half-stumbling, half-running down the hallway to his room before she was even fully awake. Other times, she’d only awaken after it was already over and Ben, sticky with snot, sweat, and tears, was crawling into his parents’ bed, hiding from his bad dreams between her body and Han’s.

When Luke came to visit, _he_ was often the one who woke and rushed to Ben’s bedside. They never discussed it in the light of day, but Leia supposed that Luke saw this as a duty to his nephew—and a favor to his sister and his best friend, both of whom only ever seemed to get a good night’s sleep when he was around.

As Ben grew older, the nightmares grew less frequent. Either that, or Ben got better at hiding them from his parents. Either way, Leia wasn’t _entirely_ fooled; she knew full well that Ben was sleeping in Luke’s bed and not his own whenever Luke came to visit.

Fortunately, his visits were frequent.

“Shall I take him to his room?” Leia asked softly.

Luke glanced up from his datapad—he was reading in bed—and patted Ben’s small, dark head affectionately. “He’s fine right where he is. Don’t worry.”

Ben was already deeply asleep, curled up against Luke’s side, one arm thrown messily over Luke’s stomach. Leia decided to let her sleeping son lie. She offered Luke a grateful smile and withdrew from the doorway.

No need to shut the door behind her. Luke always kept the door to the guest bedroom half-open when he visited anyway. It’s why Ben was there in the first place. Luke didn’t believe in locks or secrets, and there were none between any of them. There never were. There never had been.

Ben kept right on sleeping with Luke whenever he visited, long past an age that most would consider such a thing proper. And he seemed aware of the impropriety on some level, too; he no longer joined Luke so early in the evening. Instead, he’d steal into Luke’s bedroom under the cover of darkness and sneak out again, back to his own bedroom in the hour before dawn broke over the horizon.

But what if, during one of those long, restless nights when _she_ , Leia, unable to sleep and tormented by her own worries for the Republic and pacing the hallways of their apartment—a night like this one—peeked into the guest bedroom?

Inevitably, Ben would be there, his long, lanky body wrapped around Luke’s. Ben was always naked as well—he’d started eschewing all nightclothes. He was too restless a sleeper for them, he’d told her, and the sense of constriction, of phantom strangulation, had only made the nightmares worse. Whatever.

Now, in the moonlight, her son’s bare back and buttocks looked gray, ghostly, _alien_ …

And the durasteel fingertips of Luke’s prosthetic hand were stroking slowly up and down the bumps and knobs of Ben’s spine…

Wait, were they awake?

No, Leia didn’t want to know. She averted her eyes and turned away.

In the end, though, she found out anyway.

The door was half-open, as it always was, the two bodies in the bed perfectly visible, as they always were. Except, this time, they weren’t just sleeping innocently together.

They were…Ben and Luke…her brother and her son…they were…oh Gods, they were…they were…

Ben cried out and writhed, his feet flailing about in the air as his semen spilled onto his heaving belly. Above him, Luke’s hips stilled. He was biting his lip, panting, muscles flexing, trembling with the effort to calm himself down.

But Ben didn’t want Luke to calm down. Instead, he wrapped all four limbs around him, holding him close and preventing him from pulling out. “No, don’t stop. Please,” he begged. “I want you to feel good too.”

Luke hesitated, and for a half-second Leia thought he would invoke his better virtue and refuse, but then he groaned and fell forward, burying his face into the side of Ben’s neck. He resumed thrusting, hard and fast, a rapid ascent to climax.

“Luke,” Ben whispered ecstatically, “ _Luke_.”

Not Uncle Luke. Just Luke.

Leia fled.

She made it to the refresher before collapsing onto the cold, marble floor, one hand clapped over her mouth to stifle her screams and the other jammed between her legs. She couldn’t block out the sensation of Luke’s orgasm, a burst of heat which burned through every nerve ending, so intense, more intense than anything she’d ever experienced in their years together…

…and worse still was what she felt from her son:

Happiness. Pure, uncomplicated joy and contentment. Bliss. All the terrors of the night—banished in the bright light of sexual passion, of connection, _of spiritual connection_ , with the person he cherished most in all the galaxy.

Leia had wept, then, and then over subsequent days and weeks, she wept harder…because she knew she would allow it. She had to. For her son’s happiness, she would remain silent and feign ignorance. She would keep this secret. Anything. Anything for Ben.

Besides, she knew Luke would never, ever hurt him.

Han found out eventually, of course. Well, he didn’t _find out_ , not as such. But on some level, he _suspected_.

How had he arrived at his suspicions? He’d never looked in on Luke at night, not like Leia, never seen how Ben had— Or maybe he’d caught them out on the veranda, Luke sitting cross-legged, bathed by warm afternoon sun, Ben lying on his back with his head cradled in Luke’s lap, face turned slightly so that his nose was pressed nearly up against—

“I want him to go and train with Luke.”

“You’re sending our son away from us.” She’d never forget Han’s expression, not for the rest of her life. Not for a thousand years. The bafflement and the hurt had pierced her heart.

“It’s for his own good!” she’d insisted. “Luke is the only one who can control this…this…this darkness in Ben!”

“No. What Ben needs is _us_ , Leia.”

“No. Ben needs _this_ ,” she’d told him. It was true. She could feel it.

She was his mother. Her decision would be final.

But Han didn’t—couldn’t—understand. “Fine. Guess you don’t need me either, then,” he’d said.

He left her over that decision. She lost everybody she loved, in the end. Her husband, her son, even her own twin brother.

Sometimes, she wonders: If she had to do it all over again, would she have done it differently? If she is honest with herself, however, she doesn’t think she would. Her mistake had been to love too much, and to trust too much in the saving grace of love. And if that was a punishable offense, well, Leia would take that particular punishment over and over and over again.

And she does.

Now, Leia is the one plagued by nightmares, and unfortunately, she has no one to comfort her.

 

END


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